


Carry Him Out

by Rictus



Category: Star vs. The Forces Of Evil
Genre: Body Horror, Fluff and Angst, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Military Backstory, Monster Oppression, Partial fluff, Past Relationship(s), Post-Episode: s03e01-07 The Battle for Mewni, Slow Burn, Some Humor, casual overtones of brainwashing and feudalism, not fully sure where this goes, political dynamics, tofficore - relationship, will tag other characters as necessary
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2017-11-02
Packaged: 2018-12-07 14:11:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 18,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11625207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rictus/pseuds/Rictus
Summary: You take what you can get, so it goes, for the cash and sometimes, for the peace of mind; and of course, sometimes, because your employer thinks it'd' be patriotic of you. Mundanity and headaches unfold into reconnection, love, woes, and spending several months talking into a bathroom sink.





	1. - .... . / --. .- -.-- / -... . --. .. -. ...

He took the gig when it was brought up to him, partially because that was what his life had rounded out to, and partially because the underlying droning of brainwashed princesses was beginning to eat into his sleep again. Not like she was a bad employer per say, she paid fine and the accommodation was decent, but she stuck too close and stared too long. Now, mind him, he could cover himself from her wandering eyes, but his remaining (if tattered) pride and sense of self demanded that he wear whatever he damn pleased and she find somewhere else to stick her aging lust. 

A shiver ran the length of him thinking about it, the disgust renewed though its source was removed. He grabbed a chunk of rock somewhat clumsily with the end of his tail and attempted to fling it away. It flew about five feet and smashed into something else, rolled down a pile of rubble, and landed against the backs of his heels. He’d never had any particular grace in his tail, it was mostly for show and balance. He flicked the tip in irritation, picked up the rock, turned it over in his hands, and then threw it quarterback style in the first direction that took his fancy. Crack. Whoops. Someone else, another clean up worker, would take care of it. Some lesser creature, or serf, or something. 

The work wasn’t remotely difficult, but it was hand-to-gods boring. He felt like he’d been working this section for hours, and this is about what had happened: debris scattered everywhere had become debris scattered in slightly neater piles. Rasticore shook his head slightly, walked a uniform circle around the space he occupied as if inspecting his work, and considered just bailing. He didn’t need the money and one septarian walking out wouldn’t really do anything to the mewman perception of monsters— the stereotypes favored his irritation. To hell with it, then. 

He didn’t exactly have a plan of where to go after he left, not particularly wanting to get chewed out if he went back to Saint O’s early. His employer had actually been happy when he’d taken the side job, going on about civic pride and solidarity, mewnian loyalty, how different and presumably better he was for “volunteering himself” like that… Words that made the long-dead soldier in his blood stir as if dreaming, remembering. It had sent an involuntary shiver through him; on her part, she simply mistook it for being flattered. 

While Rasticore was well aware he wasn’t the cruelest weapon out there, something about the mewman woman perceiving him (quite outwardly) as some kind of dope did piss him off. Not like he was in a position to contest it; his job was to protect the leader, look nice, and go fetch. 

Slowly, a path formed behind him, chunks of rock and metal and ruined, twisted castle guts parting like a red sea of injury. No one was saying what’d happened to the castle in the first place; well, maybe the mewmans knew, but they hadn’t deigned to share. Whatever it was, it had been goddamn chaotic, whole wings had been shorn off the building. 

He slid down a slab of wall, still spotted with candle holders, and came to stand in an empty crater. Empty except for several odd details: A drag mark leading to a four foot hole in the ground, the overwhelming smell of electricity, bone, and something chimeral that made his skin crawl, and a pillar in the middle of the clearing, with something strange and glistening under it. It was black, and sparkled in the sun like lake water. Rasticore tilted his head, trying to get a better look at it. It looked like nothing he had ever seen, and had this weird sense of movement to it, though the puddle under the column wasn’t changing in size or shape. He looked around, concern tugging at his senses— something about this place, the smell, told him he shouldn’t be here. 

He had no idea what was motivating him, then, to walk up to the column and the puddle of void. Checking over his shoulder again, and satisfied that no one else was around, he bent down and braced himself against the column, leaning in over the stain. There were three drag marks that lead from a few inches out back into the black. They looked almost like… claw marks. Like something had tried to get out. He bent in closer, his snout nearly touching the puddle. Then yanked himself back in shock.

“What the fuck?”

A ripple spread out from the pillar to the lip of the liquid, then a bubble formed and popped. Holding his breath, he crawled back over to it, careful not to get too close. Nothing happened. He got closer. Things began to happen on the black surface very quickly then: 

Pop, pop, pop, pop. Pause. Pop. Pause. Pop, ripple, pop, pop. Pause. Pop, ripple, ripple, pop. 

It then stopped moving completely for about ten seconds, then repeated the pattern, this time more quickly. It did this two more times before Rasticore’s eyes nearly fell out of his head and he made a sound he himself didn’t fully understand. Morse code. The puddle of black liquid was speaking in fucking morse code. It repeated itself, each letter barely spaced out. H-E-L-P. 

“Help?” he breathed, staring in disbelief down at the ground. 

H-E-L-P. H-E-L-P. H-E-L-P. 

The first thing to do was get the column off of it, which took a little doing. Not wanting to disturb the puddle too badly, he took the column from the middle and rolled it slowly off the black plasma, giving it time to coalesce after each push. It stuck to itself like ferrofluid, clinging to some kind of general center. Once he’d cleared the puddle, he pushed the column further away with a final, harsher shove, and sat back on his heels, hovering over the thing. 

Very slowly, something coalesced in the center of the liquid: A bulb. The plasma came to a head, and then slowly receded, leaving behind… was that… a single eye. It stared at the sky, the sun, before swiveling around in every direction until it landed on him. The pupil blew open. 

He could tell already, just from the pupil and the iris’s coloring: a septarian’s eye. Oh, god, this was something that could happen to them? Rasticore had never really— had kept himself from it— thought about how much of a septarian had to be destroyed before they couldn’t regenerate anymore. He hadn’t thought about it since the war, that overconfident princess and the whole thing with Toffee… He shook his head firmly to disperse the thought. It’d do no good thinking of Toffee, who was, as far as he knew, most likely dead. He wasn’t the type to vanish, so that had to mean something… He shook his head again. No. Don’t think about that. 

The eye was still looking at him, and something about it felt uncomfortably familiar, like it was quietly pulling him apart, turning each piece over in its hands. Which it did not have. And it wasn’t damn familiar, it was a septarian eye in a puddle of black sludge and the only reason it was reminding him of Toffee was because he’d brought him up. The eye blinked at him, slowly. 

“Did I help?” He asked it. No response. Rasticore huffed and ran a hand over his head. He didn’t want to be caught doing this— whatever this was, it was weird. Talking to mysterious sentient stains. “Okay, great. Bye.” 

N-O. 

“No what? I got the pillar off you. Go on, you’re free now, or whatever.” He rose to stand and stared down at it, ready to walk away. 

D-O-N-T G-O. 

“Listen, while I’d love to stay and talk, you’re a puddle of black goo.” He shifted his body towards leaving, the tip of his tail flicking again. “Not that this hasn’t been interesting, but, you know.”

R-A-S-T.

Rasticore stopped dead, spun back around, and was on his knees over the puddle in seconds. “What did you say?”

R-A-S-T. R-A-S-T.

He leaned in, his mouth nearly touching the puddle, breath fanning across the fluid. “Where did you hear that? Who told you that name?”

I-T-S M-E.

His jaw tightened, teeth set on edge and half-bared. A dangerous prickling sensation sparked behind his eyes. “…Toffee?”

R-A-S-T H-E-L-P M-E.

He felt the breath unspool from his lungs, and the pricking behind his eyes sharpened quickly— he scrubbed an arm across his eyes, citing irritation or dust to himself, not tears, nothing like tears. A thin tendril of black ran out from the puddle and across the dirt, as if reaching for him. Disbelieving, he put a claw to the ground and watched the black line crawl slowly around it, running up his finger like ivy. It was warm. He swallowed hard, carefully pulling his hand back and watching the black uncurl and drop back down into the puddle. Toffee…? It was… not actually impossible, merely unlikely. But supposing this thing was actually who it claimed to be, he couldn’t risk abandoning it, not for the sake of the long-dead soldier, nor for the sake of other things that had slowly grown withered within him. 

He motioned for the puddle to wait (and felt immediately like an idiot, what the hell else was Toffee going to do but wait), retrieved a silver flask from under his cape, and dumped its contents out (a type of sherry, if he recalled correctly, given to him by his employer. He was doing his best to be professional and civil but she really couldn’t seem to take a hint.) Lowering the mouth of the flask in front of the black, he watched in equal parts awe and horror as the liquid slowly pushed itself uphill and through the thin silver lips.


	2. Returning to Two Places at Once

The hope was to return to his quarters without detection or at least without arousing too much attention. He’d exited the main kingdom and palace square as delicately as a man with a broken chainsaw could, and could still feel his cheekbones burning unpleasantly from the revving and accompanying smirks and stares. 

“Leaving already?” One of the others had asked him, halfway through some kind of corn thing. As long as he lived, he would never understand mewmans and their freaking corn.

“Uh, I’m needed back at the damn prison— er, school.” Lie. 

“Dang, why do all the strong ones leave early?” she failed in hiding the upward flick of her eyes. “But if it’s Miss H, I guess it can’t be helped. Your thing’s over there with the other ones.” She gestured lazily towards a pile of blades. 

Right where he’d left it, a rusty, one-to-one scale sore thumb. He always approached the thing with confidence, hoping his attitude would transfer. It never did. Damn bootleg. 

\--

Whenever he got back, day or night, month to month, it always seemed to be overcast at least, the sky’s belly swollen and bruised. Perhaps it was some kind of atmospheric magic— Was it easier to brainwash people if it was raining? Thinking about the dozens of young girls behind the thick walls, chanting their minds to rot, made him feel the same general mix of nausea, sympathy, and contempt as always. Individualism was no threat to leadership— its biggest enemies were ignorance, bull-headedness, and downright stupidity. The enigmatic differences of strategy, mercy, and overall personality of their generals had come to their aid time and time again during the war… Instinctively, his hand found the flask on his hip, well hidden on the left side of his body under a swath of red fabric. He drummed his fingers against it, creating a dull noise, and smiled to himself when a barely audible series of taps, coming from the inside, sounded back. 

Not particularly interested in dealing with the humanoid guards and gradual trickle of crying girls at the front gate, Rasticore circled around to the back. The wall there was high, sheer, pretty much impossible for the average child— they were children, after all— to summit. Nothing someone with the appropriate height and build couldn’t handle. He paused at the top of the wall, crouched like a mercenary, his tail extended straight out to help balance on the wet stones. A thin drop of rain smacked against his face, and he pulled the cape more protectively around his left side. Which was stupid. Leftover military instinct, he supposed— protect your superior. Still, he did check to make sure the flask was completely secured before he jumped down, absorbing the shock of the fall with a gentle roll across the dampening lawn. Most days, he’d just brace the shock, because the spines on his shoulders and tail left little punctures in the immaculate grass. Today, he couldn’t be paid to care. 

If you shook one of the back doors just right— and happened to have the base strength to be able to lift a train car— the lock would fall open. Rasticore could do it with a flex of his wrist, but for your average princess, it’d be next to impossible. That, and they were mostly kept on the upper floors, hardly ever would you find one below the 6th floor. He was pretty sure after a couple years of working there that the layout was enchanted— he could never keep the locations of all the rooms straight. Luckily for him, he didn’t have to give a damn about most of them, nor any sounds that would come from behind them: crying, begging, fists on wood, screams, eventually they all yielded to a silence only broken if you were to press your ear to the door, and then you might here a quiet, cultish chanting. He’d be lying if he said he didn’t care at all for them, but this job required a silent heart, and after the war and the starving and scraping by, and the constant little nitpick reminders that he was a member of the losing side, well, his heart had not spoken nor twitched in over twenty years. 

As he walked through the dungeon corridors, hand surreptitiously on the silver vessel, Rasticore thought again of his work. Most of it was boring and frankly over saturated with a sweetness and an affection that more than creeped him out, and made the general nothingness of the work take on a deadened flavor. The hunting he found more favorable, at least during the chase of it, the body. The end was always unsatisfying, partially because nobody wanted to hold a screaming, kicking creature close to themselves, and partially because it always reminded him of taking in prisoners of war. They had all been as fucking brainwashed as the screaming girls soon would be— He’d been asked multiple times, if he remembered correctly, if he was going to eat them. There were of course various problems with such rhetoric, least of all that mewmans tasted like shit. 

By the time he’d come on the scene, the attitude towards POW was fairly split; between those who favored using them as bargaining chips for exchange, and those, like Toffee, who favored putting them down after they’d metered out their usefulness. As a general rule, he wouldn’t trade with Mewni for anything: if their army took his men, he’d cut his losses, expecting them to either return of their own volition, or if they were unable, to do the proper thing and take their information to their graves. 

Rasticore looked down to where the flask hid as he walked, rounding the corner of a staircase. He had been taken himself, captured by the enemy, and he had failed to return. To his credit, he hadn’t said a goddamn word they could use, but he was only freed, and hardly that, when the war had concluded. Someone had come to his cell and offered him this job; he couldn’t remember their face well, but from the chips of static in the man’s voice, it had probably been one of Heinous’s mutants. 

It had been dark— Rasticore tried not to think about those days, locked in beside the din of other prisoners, alone in the dark with his arms shackled awkwardly above his head, his whole body stiff and torqued, snapping his jaws at flies and mewman interrogators. The satisfaction of watching them flinch wore off too quickly; what’d killed him was twofold: the time left in total isolation, and the thoughts of what he’d left behind. 

It had been covert, to put it mildly, as the war stretched on and tensions between species and factions began to rub raw; Toffee would’ve caught utter hell showing preference to one soldier over another. The others would assume, they had hoped, that they were tending further towards civility with each other because they were both septarian, and elitist about it, and both of these things were fairly true. While no definitive example could be given offhand, the belief held by those under him was that Toffee found the sort of “mixed bag” of various races and dominions grating, if not beneath him and his own kind. They couldn’t complain about bad leadership, or being subject to poor treatment, but they did tend to notice who rose ranks under Toffee and who got his ear and the better positions. 

Rasticore slid by two of the metal-crusted freaks, in two places at once— one, in St.O’s being quiet, and two, twenty eight years in the past. If he could make it to his own room without detection he could drop the idea of the first and focus on the second. 

The general had been different around him since Rasticore had been assigned to his faction— He would stare too long, pass too close, give Rasticore looks that had, in the beginning, been impossible to decipher. Rasticore’s last superior had been close to his underlings, and when they had first started out, Toffee’s aloofness and detached grace had seemed like a challenge, something to break through and get to whatever was underneath. He would invite the other to various parts of his day, things that his old squadron had all done together— taking meals, combat training, off-time. Toffee ate alone, spent his free time alone, and rarely engaged with his soldiers beyond correction and demonstration. But still, his eyes would follow the other septarian, his expression almost… somehow… nervous. He had none of the boisterousness of Rasticore’s former general, but there was a charge to him, a deep undercurrent of controlled force. Rasticore had never seen him smile. 

Looking around carefully, he slipped into his room without any incident, and breathed a sigh of relief, locking the door behind him and sliding down the wood to sit, uncaring that his shoulders and the base of his tail left gentle gouges in its grain. Take it out of his salary, paltry as it was. His hand fell to the silver side of the flask, the action still shrouded in red. He knew, of course, that the proper thing to do was pour the other man out into something more breathable, bigger, something that would allow them to communicate again and that would let Toffee look at him. Lord knew Toffee had probably missed looking at him. The thing was, though, he didn’t particularly want to look at Toffee right now, not in the state he was in. He didn’t want to think about what he had found, or how, or why, or what it meant. He just… kind of wanted to hold the other man close to him, and if that meant holding his liquified body in an army memento, so be it. He ran his claws along the faded, buffed out engravings on the flask’s chest: RCD. 

Christ, he just wanted to hold him, look at him, explain himself. Why he hadn’t come back. He didn’t know enough fucking morse code to tap out “I’m sorry.”

Rasticore closed his eyes, sat at the base of his door, hand tracing over his silver initials, and drifted. Memories would have to fill the space of flesh, at least, for now… for who knew how long. Who knew what this was. It was both too much to hope for and too cruel that it was all he was getting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, two different slow burns in the same story, albeit one is a little quicker than the other one. These men are going to go through hell together. Get ready to feel all the feelings, kids. 
> 
> I have no idea why this worked but for at least 2/3 of these upcoming chapters I just listened to Smother-Daughter on repeat. Daughter is an incredible band for deep/longing/sad/nostalgia-tinted music and I love writing to them. I've been making all kinds of wistful, lovelorn Rasty expressions with my own face in this cafe and I've gotten some looks. I've also been making Toffee expressions, because I love them dearly, and he has the best fucking faces tbh. Still though, getting looks lmao.


	3. Beginnings

The drift took him to an early memory of their time, before they had really begun to meet each other. Back when the distance between them as individuals, never mind as general and soldier, was paramount, tangible in the air. If he breathed deeply enough, the sounds and scents came back to him as well— blocking out the creaking of the castle and the faint wails and repetition speech of a hundred young women, the space filled instead with the surround of insects, the sounds of men and the slap of bodies to water; the cold smell of purity, and of work yielding to pleasure, sleep soon to follow. There were next to no other actual septarians in the unit, but there were a fair number of monsters who seemed at least somewhat related to the concept; and Rasticore didn’t have friends, exactly, but he had comrades, and the warmth emanating from him seemed to attract them. 

He’d stripped down and was about knee-deep into the slip of lake when he spotted Toffee, walking a straight line a few yards up the shore, his hands behind his back and his stride purposeful. Looking directly ahead, he didn’t spare a glance to his men. 

“Hey!” Rasticore had signaled, and to the day he wasn’t entirely sure what’d come over him. 

Caught by the noise, the general had turned to look at him. His eyes followed the lines of the soldier’s body, from the openness of his eyes to his frankly dumb smile, and down. They stayed down for a while, fixated, then very slowly scrolled back up. His face was completely unreadable. Rasticore was in that moment pretty sure he’d done a stupid thing and was going to get some kind of reprimand, verbal or not, because of it; still, he kind of waved, and inclined his head, ‘come over here, yes you.’ 

At the time he’d felt a little bit out of his body, his tail carding through the water in gentle arcs, fairly sure that if Toffee did come over he’d have some cold hell to say. He did end up coming over, after an odd little shake of his head, as if trying to clear it of something, his walk still purposeful but far less basically confident, his posture at once both loosened and oddly stiff, tail waving from side to side at the end. It kept moving when he stopped at the lip of the water, as it came up to kiss the tips of his boots. They stared at each other, neither apparently sure of what to do with himself. 

“Uh, I was just wondering, if you wanted…” Rasticore smiled apologetically, and indicated the lake again. 

“Oh, I… No, thank you.” He looked around, again with that structure and cadence, as if he was actually nervous. 

“Um, yeah, of course! I’m sorry for interrupting you. I’was just curious.” He put a hand behind his head, feeling like an idiot. “I won’t keep you, then.”

Toffee stood there in silence for just seconds too long, then nodded curtly and turned away. He made it about four feet before stopping, though he did not turn around again. 

“Don’t take too long. You’re due for evaluation tonight.”

Rasticore turned back towards him. “Evaluation, sir?” 

“The eastern training grounds, twenty minutes. I will be waiting for you.” With that, he continued without a second look, leaving a crowd to gather around a very confused Rasticore.

“Ooh, damn, you’re in trouble!” someone sounded off behind him, combined with a hand thunking against his back. 

“I’ve never heard of an evaluation like that before!”

“He’s gonna tear you apart, man! Eastern training grounds, out of the way, easy to hide a body!” 

Laughter, and a chorus of whistles. 

“Nah, dude, Rasticore can take him! You’ve got, what, how much on him? Twenty?”

“Shut up, that’s insubordination!” 

“Is not! Anyway, good luck with the exam, dude!” Another hand caught against his shoulder. 

Rasticore for his part just stared curiously at the space where Toffee had been. 

Fifteen minutes later found him pacing his tent, one knee guard still on his bed, trying to think if he had everything he needed to bring to whatever an evaluation was. He had left the lake to whoops and cheers, shouts of encouragement and the hum of his former company loudly placing bets on who was going to win— there hadn’t been any convincing them that Toffee wasn’t going to kick his ass. Sighing, he sat down beside the small skull on what could only technically be described as a mattress, and rubbed the space between his eyes. Stupid, sounding off like that, and to a damn general no less. Who in the hell did he think he was? No doubt it was leftover mirth and camaraderie from his loose relationship with his former superior. Damn him, he should be able to tell the difference by now— Toffee wasn’t like that. He showed no seams, no weaknesses, everything from his battle plans to the way he’d turn a corner was sharp and fluid, calculated. It unnerved Rasticore to no end that apparently, if indeed he wasn’t imagining it, something about him set the other septarian on edge. 

It wouldn’t do to be late and humiliate himself further. Gathering up what little he believed he’d need (the other knee guard, and a machete in case he would be asked to perform with a weapon), he paused in front of a shield leaning against the inside of his tent, and examined his mottled reflection, the metal dull in patches and warped in others. He looked like a series of mistakes. He’d fucked himself over completely, hadn’t he? He could almost feel his rank dropping as he strode out of the tent and towards the eastern arena. 

No one really used it: as a body, the monster army’s back was to the trees, and any combat performed in that area made them all tense and short-tempered; the idea that they would have to fall back into the forest implied that they would have had to suffer a crippling defeat, something so catastrophic that it pushed them clean out of the fields and into the woods. Still, they had to be prepared, and as the war dragged on and became long in the tooth, there was more talk of the eastern grounds being utilized in new ways, with greater frequency. It set them all on edge. 

Hovering on the lip of the cleared out space, Rasticore made a last-ditch attempt to come off as more presentable than he felt, trying not to let the nerves make him tighten up, and trying very hard to stop his tail from lashing around. If he was going to be asked to spar, he needed to be quick on his feet, nubile, lightning. He felt very much right then like he possessed the finesse and grace of a bag of mewnian cornmeal. Slowly, he stepped out from behind the trees, though it felt at the time more like they had slid out of the way and propelled him forward. 

Across the arena, Toffee sat reclined on a low boulder, light from the setting sun dripping amber along the blade of his khopesh. He rolled the handle of the weapon across his palm, making the curved hook spin a deadly ballet, seemingly focussed on the dance of light across the metal. Rasticore watched him trace the length of the blade with two delicate claws, following the vicious ellipse of it. 

“You’re late.” Toffee spoke softly, his eyes half-lidded. He made no other indication towards nor took any further notice of the other septarian. 

Rasticore bowed his head, feeling the words like a punch to the stomach. “Forgive me, general.”

“Well. It doesn’t matter much.”

He put the khopesh down by his side and turned to settle his gaze on Rasticore, motioning for him to step in further. He sounded neither bored nor apathetic, exactly… But more so like he was running through a script when he’d much rather be doing something else. Impatience. Rasticore sent a brief thanks to whatever gods had decided septarians couldn’t sweat. 

“If you’ll forgive my asking, sir,” Rasticore attempted when the silence between them begin to press heavy, “What exactly will I… be evaluated on? What would you have me do?” 

The corners of Toffee’s mouth twitched. “What do you think you should be doing?” 

“Uh, I’m sorry, I… What?” 

The general leaned forward, resting his chin on the back of one hand, his tail curling lazily against the rock. “Show me whatever you think I should see, Soldier.” 

“Um. I… Okay,” Rasticore fumbled for words, and grew quickly to hate himself for it, “I’ve, uh, brought a weapon, so I could do that, and I guess I’ve been experimenting a little with my, uh, close range I think it’s called…” He looked up mid-sentence for approval, a reaction, anything. Toffee blinked slowly down at him, looking thoroughly unimpressed. 

“Whatever you think I should see,” he repeated. “Begin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I *really* wanted to make it longer, but this was all I could manage for now. I might have to change the rating to M with the upcoming chapters, because methinks there might be some smut in them...
> 
> Rasticore has one perspective on "just guys being bros." Toffee could say the same and mean something completely different ;)


	4. Gonna Get A Little Weird

The whole process of it was very strange. He wove between invisible enemies, a parry, a spin, feeling deeply self-conscious at first and well aware of the general’s eyes on him. If he really wanted to perform, he had to forget about the other man and just focus on the “fighting;” after a few minutes, this became easier and his movements grew more natural, and he started to actually enjoy himself. Sure, it wasn’t real, but all that meant was that he was guaranteed to win. 

He began to develop his opponents in his mind, generating appearances and assigning basic patterns to their maneuvers. Mewmans tended to rely on their support systems of weaponry and transport, and overwhelming numbers, as they themselves were basically bread dough on fragile skeletons. He rolled and slid into a lunge, staring up at where he imagined a face would be, shielded by thick armor, on a warnicorn starting to rear up, hooves carving through the air. He spun on his heels and lashed out with his tail, ideally catching the thing’s back legs, and hopefully the weight of its fall would injure the rider. Well, it was up to him if it did or not— he decided it had. Two crushed legs, a breathless plea, decapitated in a whoosh of air and phantom viscera. He’d forgotten about Toffee completely.

He presumed three left. In the course of the fight with them, he threw the machete to one side, where it speared into the torn up earth. He was countering, punching, flowing like a stream, slamming the spikes on his shoulder through a mewman’s foolishly bared throat… Enunciating his strikes and even laughing in victory. What the hell had he been worried about, this was fun. 

“Stop.” 

Rasticore looked back to Toffee, and slowly picked himself up off the ground, panting slightly, and suddenly very aware of his own smile, which faltered slightly as their eyes met. Fingers on the handle of his khopesh, his head tilted to one side, the general eyed him with the same half-closed stare, his expression definitely betraying something, but nothing Rasticore recognized. Slowly he rose to stand, the movements smooth and well controlled; he took several sliding steps forward and leapt the rest of the way to the ground, striding towards the soldier, weapon held at the ready.

“Sir?”

“I’ve observed all I can,” he said, tone still soft. “Retrieve your weapon.”

“Oh, uh, alright.” Rasticore walked over to the machete and pried it out of the dirt, glad that Toffee couldn’t see his face— a blush had started across his cheeks as he recalled the moments before, the growls and battle cries and sounds of momentary victory he had made. Gods, how had he managed to get so engrossed in fake combat he’d forgotten he was under observation? Toffee probably thought he was an idiot, if he hadn’t before, septarian or not. Weapon in hand, he walked back, feeling quite sheepish now, his nerves renewed. 

“Good. Take your stance.” Toffee’s stance was all coiled energy and perfect restraint: he wouldn’t have looked much out of place in a strategics meeting standing like that, though certain tensed areas and the positioning of his feet indicated he could lash out at the slightest provocation. The khopesh turned slightly in his hand, its crescent sideways, innermost blade and needle point facing Rasticore.

“You want to fight me?” He swallowed. His comrades had been right. Shit. “But I’m just a soldier—”

“You are far more than that. We will begin on three; you may start.”

All training matches began after a countdown, so no surprises there. Setting it up like that helped each opponent set an internal rhythm for their movements, which the other could try to disrupt or keep pace to. 

“Aloud?” 

“Aloud.”Toffee rolled his shoulders down his back, neck tilting to one side.

Rasticore took a few seconds beforehand to adjust his position: legs apart, on the balls of his feet, joints tensed to spring, weapon held out from his side. 

“One. T—” He didn’t make it any further as the general struck forward, a single condensed bolt of force, khopesh aimed at his head. Rasticore barely managed to dodge, jerking left with a cry of surprise. Toffee’s momentum carried him into a sharp turn, which he came out of to mimic Rasticore’s pose, his expression having shifted to one of determined focus. 

“I wasn’t ready!” the soldier gasped, hand rising to meet his chest. 

“A true opponent will not wait until you are ready,” Toffee spoke calmly, his gaze unsympathetic. This time, as he tensed to move, Rasticore caught the hint and shifted out of the way with a little more grace, though he was still careful to pull his tail out of Toffee’s path, not wanting to trip him.

“What are you doing?”

“Oh, I… I didn’t want to uh, obstruct your…” 

“Wrong. Get in my way, make me falter, strike me down.” His eyes narrowed. “If you can.” 

They came to stand across from each other, darting left and right, calculating the follow through of each movement and its counter exchange, rescinding an extended leg, a gesture forward, both tails snapping and curling in thought. 

“You really want me to get in your way, no holding back?” Rasticore offered, feeling his smile beginning to return. He was still fairly sure he was going to get his ass handed to him, but the opportunity to see Toffee fight, let alone spar with him like an equal, was practically its own reward. Toffee nodded, the first smile of his the soldier had ever seen tugging at the corners of his mouth. It began in earnest then.

Something Rasticore had not considered before the spar was Toffee’s expertise in reading body language— now, he found himself at a considerable disadvantage not being able to parse the general’s. His was full of feints, one arm tensing and pulling back only for the other to strike; he was far more agile and willing to grind himself into the dirt than Rasticore would’ve ever assumed. Of course, reasonably speaking, he should’ve known better; yet the image of Toffee he held had prevented him from seeing the other man doing things like skidding across the ground, crouching down on all fours, his teeth bared and his eyes almost animal, hair frenzied and covered with dust. 

Rasticore lowered himself down as well; grinning and raising an eyebrow he tossed the machete to the side of the clearing. Toffee smiled, stood straight up, and walked calmly over to it, setting his khopesh down beside it. He then walked in even pace back to Rasticore, who was still in a low lunge on the ground, and now looking slightly confused. Toffee ran a hand through his hair, grinned, chuckled, and launched himself into the soldier’s body without warning— almost a pounce— sending them both tumbling to the ground. 

They moved as a unit, a flurry of strikes and counters, snapping teeth, barks of sound. Blood was beginning to saturate the dirt beneath them, pooling and splashing out. Toffee let out a sound of feral delight, leaving a deep gouge in Rasticore’s arm, lacerating through to snap the bone. The wound wove shut in seconds, Rasticore raising the still healing arm and breaking his superior’s jaw with a satisfying crack. He watched in awe as Toffee, without his hands, set it back into place with a deep click, and snapped his teeth in the soldier’s face, breath fanning out onto his skin. One hand was propping himself up by gripping onto Rasticore’s bicep, the other hand on his chest, their legs tangled together. He was giving Rasticore a more explicit version of that same strange look he’d been giving him since they’d met. Excitement, exhilaration, almost a hunger— this could be blamed on the spar, he supposed. He himself was feeling a little out of sorts, almost too happy, adrenaline making his veins spark and tremble. 

For the first few seconds, he was sure he was imagining it— quickly, though, he realized that was not the case. Toffee’s tail had begun to wrap around his own, squeezing against him. Rasticore looked up at him again, at the expression he was making. Eyes half-lidded, breathing deeply through a smile… His tail began to squeeze against Rasticore’s with an actual rhythm. He then began to notice other things, like the fact that Toffee was almost shaking, and that his tongue had darted out to flash across his teeth, that damn look in his eyes… Could he be trying to…?

Rasticore reached up experimentally and slowly wound his hand around the back of Toffee’s neck, taking a fistful of black hair and giving a slight tug back. The general’s eyes widened as he let out a soft gasp, his chest pushing up, hips rocking forward, the movements seeming involuntary. It was around then that Rasticore felt something against his thigh that definitely had not been there when the match had started. Oh. Well then. He flushed and bit back an incredulous laugh; it had been longing and nerves he’d seen in Toffee’s odd stares, but to have this be the reason why… For all his trying, a few slips of laughter managed to escape him. Toffee’s brow furrowed and he shifted slightly away from Rasticore, tail beginning to unwrap, a look of horror quickly eclipsing his face.

“I… Forgive me, I, I’m so, I’m such a… I’ll just…” 

“Hey now.” Rasticore moved his hand down Toffee’s back, gently re-wrapping their tails. “Don’t worry about it.” 

The other septarian gave him a look bordering on bafflement, and seemed very worried about it. He was blushing in earnest now— how cute. His hand found the space above Toffee’s tail, fingers falling into the two soft indentations there, and gently but firmly pushed his hips towards him, returning contact between his thigh and what he presumed to be Toffee’s erection. 

“Can I kiss you?”

“What?” he sounded completely distracted, and honestly couldn’t be blamed much for that.

“Can I kiss you, sir?” 

The next thing he felt was Toffee wrapping around him, tails together and arms around his neck, his tongue begging entry against Rasticore’s teeth. He was smaller, smoother, warm from the fight and beginning to snap his hips forward to the pace of his tightening tail. Rasticore parted his legs and breathed deep when their bodies met, Toffee kissing him fiercely, grinding against him with a force and a need he hadn’t expected. For his part he wound his other hand through the silky black hair, kneading his fingers against the small of his back. They parted to breathe, Toffee arching up, slamming his hips forward and down, rubbing hard, his eyes slitting shut as he began to moan…

\--

A sharp knock from the other side of his door snapped him away from the memory, jarring him so badly he almost startled a few inches off the ground. Eyes wide, he looked around in confusion, and found one hand on the flask gripping it hard enough to begin to warp its shape, while his other hand had travelled to about where you’d expect, his jeans seeming far more constrictive than they had when he’d initially sat down. He was alone, leaning against a door, looking into a castle bedroom that could do with some cleaning, and something was pounding against the wood to his back.

“What?” He growled, his voice coming out far harsher than normal, still thick with the memory. 

“You’re being summoned, lizard,” the other side of the door said in a static threaded voice. 

“Right there,” he grumbled, pushing himself to his feet. The hell had he been doing again? His hand tightened around the flask, most likely leaving a soft imprint of his initials in his palm. It felt heavy. Oh, right. The morning before. The black puddle, the morse code, Toffee. Gods, Toffee. The pain, renewed, hit him like a fucking mewman queen's spell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Goddamn you and you long con mind games, Toffee, just tell him you like him and jump that D, JEEZUS. Though to be fair that would be extremely out of character and this way is more fun to read. I promise more sexy sexy flashbacks, and of course, more tedium and angst for poor Rasticore.


	5. Cold Tea

Time was lacking, and he had to decide what to do with the flask before fulfilling the summons. There was always the chance she’d want to refill it for him with something, and though he was increasingly worried about getting some equivalent of roofied, there was nothing he could say to turn her down while keeping himself in good graces— a task which felt more and more every day like it would take infinite patience and hoop-jumping. So he could leave it, and its contents, in his room; the thought, though, made him deeply uncomfortable, negligent almost. What if something happened to Toffee while he was gone? Who knew what the summons was or how long it could take; they’d been sieged and encountered various other difficulties, mostly due to uprisings, before. It wasn’t that Rasticore blamed the girls for their occasional revolutions, not at all, but they were inconvenient and ultimately, futile. He had become a bit more of a permanent fixture at St.O’s than he’d intended: a lot of the princesses knew about him, having seen him slip by or having been personally delivered to Heinous by him. They would remember, share information, hold grudges. Again, he couldn’t really blame them, but it made his life a bit more difficult, particularly now. He couldn’t risk anything happening to the flask, which itself was important to him, nor its contents, which meant infinities more. 

Alternately, he could dump Toffee out somewhere in the room and deal with the problem that way, but again, he didn’t want to leave his superior alone and at the mercy of the uneven social climate in the castle. Now, he was fairly sure no princess knew where his room was, but still— and the mutants knew, and he shuddered in a brief nausea imaging one of them flushing the black mass of septarian or trying to scrub him away. Could Toffee feel pain? Humiliation, certainly. No, he couldn’t part him from the flask until he was sure his quarters were under a strict personal lockdown. What did that leave? Taking the general with him in the silver vessel, and pretending he didn’t have it on him if it came up. That wasn’t ideal by any measure, but it’d have to do.

He holstered the slightly dented flask, and rubbed at the letters marking his left palm, willing them away. She’d notice, and she’d ask what they were. Eyes like a hawk for someone her age, though perhaps he merely assumed her to be older than she was; the primness and the hairdo made that distinctly possible. Not like he was going to ask or anything, that might be mistaken for some kind of flirting. He suppressed a shudder: ew. The door sounded again, this time accompanied by a small rattle at the handle. 

“Oi, any day now, reptile!”

Reptile. Technically true, but it was a little grating to be called out as such, as if it were some kind of defining anomaly, by a humanoid lump of skin, bones, gristle, and whirring mechanisms. Typically he refrained from snapping at them, but what with the way his employer treated them there was no need— he sure as hell didn’t hold back out of respect, so much as an utter lack of feeling for them; not even worth a flash of teeth. 

“I said right there!” Rasticore bit out, allowing a bit of a snarl to accentuate his tone. “Blow a fucking circuit, why don’t you?”

All he really did before stalking back over to the messed up door was change capes; she preferred purple to red, which he didn’t give two shits about himself, but it’d be wise right now to create as little tension between them as possible, what with the precious cargo in tow and all. The sooner he could give instructions to have everything and anything keep clear of his room, and get back to it in one piece, the better. He tried to adjust the cape to cover more skin than usual before opening the door, the memories of Toffee hovering over him, pupils wide and hungry, still thrummed in the back of his mind, and showing off his chest in leu of that made him feel profoundly guilty. Oh hell, it wasn’t his fault she looked, but something about being ogled by one person while another one, whom he loved, was strapped to his hip was more than a little unsettling. Toffee, for better or worse, had a vicious jealousy streak. He felt it was within his duties as a subordinate and lover to honor that.

He opened the door a crack and poked his head out, frill rising several inches in agitation. At about waist height was a stout, lumpy creature with a mechanical eye and partially metal jaw. 

“There you are, finally,” it said, rolling its good eye. “The boss wants to see you.”

“Shocking. Riveting,” Rasticore growled under his breath, running a hand over his frills. “I don’t need an escort for that… So, you know, bye.” 

“You’re gonna get lost,” it smirked, but took several tottering steps backwards, before turning and heading back the way it had come. 

“Gonna get lost, my fucking tail.” 

God, he hated them, and he’d hated them from the moment the first one had showed up at his cell all those years ago. They reeked of an unearned superiority, and there were few things your average septarian hated more than being belittled, especially by something so obviously inferior. 

The route to the castle’s highest tower was a little different every time, but to his credit he found it with ease. The walk took him past princesses, which merited him the usual vacant stares alternating with hairy eyes, and the one or two who would try to interact with him. He wove around a cluster of three of them, making starched conversation with each other: one pressed something into the palm of his hand as he passed. He could guess what was on it without looking, though he did open it up with a defeated sigh and a glance back. Scribbled in harried letters were two words, looking as if they had been scribed by a lunatic:

HELP ME.

He shook his head hard; this was common, and wasn’t meant to affect him, but he was flashing back to that morning, the morse code, H-E-L-P M-E R-A-S-T. 

He felt a little uncomfortable, and more than a bit evil (at least to some capacity) staring at the crumpled scrap of paper and putting it in the pocket beside the flask. No one was coming to help her, least of all him… How long had Toffee been there, bubbling and rippling desperately, calling for help to anyone who got close enough, frightened and practically blind, too scared of giving away his position to a mewman to summon up an eye… The corners of Rasticore’s eyes pricked and he swallowed hard, forcing the thoughts away. Professionalism was required of him, and he could present nothing less.

He found her room through sound; presumably the location had shifted again— he would not allow himself to admit that he had been lost before he’d heard her voice echoing from behind a closed door, firelight spitting shadows out from beneath it into the hall. He knocked in usual fashion, two abrasive raps. 

“Rasticore, darling, is that you?”

Ugh, ugh, ugh. 

“Er— Yes.” 

“Come in then, don’t be shy.”

He exhaled hard and gritted his teeth, suppressing the urge to punch something. Usually he could deal with her, but then again, usually he didn’t have his commanding officer in a damn bottle. Once he had collected himself about as much as he would be able, he pushed the door open with slight hesitancy. 

“Evening, Ma’am.” He kept his tone softer, though still strictly business. “You summoned me?”

She was sitting before a snapping fire, shielded on all sides by a spotless balloon chair. On the table beside her were cotton pads and alcohol, the former smeared with the color of her skin. What a terrible fucking secret, he thought, that she was mewnian. Imagine, a mewnian engaging in oppression, scandalous! Not like that’d ever happened before. Perhaps the bigger secret was that, as the club markings on her cheeks indicated (at least, he suspected), she had Butterfly blood in her. The intricacies of that weren’t his business, but still, they made him curious and a little wary of his own position and safety— How much of him was under a Butterfly’s thumb? Another detail of his current life that would no doubt’ve enraged Toffee. If he ever regenerated enough for things to be explained to him, they would have to be explained very delicately. There were already some choice wounds from his military days between them that he had never really properly sorted out. But he was distracting himself again; he ran a thumb over the flask beneath his cape, trying his best to remain discrete about it. 

“I’ve told you, Rasty, call me by my name,” she laughed, gesturing to the space in front of her. His whole being bristled. She called him that a lot, and the bastardization of both his name and the name Toffee had given him drew up a special kind of ire. 

“I know that, ma’am— Ms. Heinous.” The hand that wasn’t on the flask found the back of his neck. Gods, why now?

He circled around to face her, the fire warming his back, his tail sweeping through the ashes at its mouth, nearly upsetting their pail. His cheeks darkened in frustration, and she laughed, a sharp sound like the ringing of a school bell. He knew what she wanted, and most times he could force himself to comply. Pay raises happened sometimes if he did that. However, tonight, it was all he could do to keep his teeth covered. 

“You summoned me,” Rasticore echoed, the tone of a question leaving this time.

“Yes, I did.” She sighed, running one hand absently over the alcohol bottle. “I’m sure you know what’s been bothering me of late, don’t you?” 

With everything he had, he held in a sound of exasperation; this was probably about Marco. He’d failed to capture her the first time, and now the boss had a chip in her shoulder about it. Well, at least he could get the fuck out of there sooner. 

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, ignoring her slight pout at his formality. “I’ll take care of it this time.” 

“You can’t be blamed for your previous failure, you know. After all, it was a Quest Buy card.” 

“Uh-huh.” 

Which was basically the equivalent of saying “it’s not your fault, after all, it was a basic task and you, silly man, know how you get with those.” He blinked very, very slowly, but showed no other outward signs of his irritation. 

“I’ll start now, then, I guess,” Rasticore muttered. “If that’s all.”

She smiled at him, affectionate and tired, albeit a little bit disappointed. He didn’t particularly want to think about why. 

“That will indeed be all.” 

He nodded curtly, and made it halfway out before he remembered his own agenda.

“Oh, if I could ask something… Can we have it so that none of the, uh, things go into my room?”

“But Rasty, dear, however else will we keep it clean?!”

“I’m a grown man,” he muttered under his breath, before replying properly. “Er, I was thinking I could take that over. No offense, but it creeps me out when they touch my stuff.”

“Well… I suppose we can give it a try— But you’d better keep that room immaculate!” 

“Grown man,” he reiterated, almost silently. Did she want to be his wife or his mother, geez. “I will, ma’am. Good evening.”

As he left, he could hear her delivering his order to Gemini, who had been lurking eerily in the corner for the whole of the interaction, holding a tea tray with offerings that had no doubt gone cold ages ago. 

Returning to his quarters, he was somewhat relieved not to pass by the girl who’d delivered the plea for help. It was getting late, the crying and chanting behind the doors dissolving into fretful or, alternately, stock-still sleep. Disgusting system. As he shut the door behind him and leaned more wounds into it, Rasticore wondered what Toffee might think of this place. His seemingly natural hatred of oppression would probably burn it to the ground, though his opinions on the girls themselves might be a bit less generous. 

He drummed his fingers against the flask, and after a moment, two hollow taps pinged back. Thank god. Slowly, he unholstered it and unscrewed the top, peering down the open neck in the half-light; his eyesight was far better than a mewman’s, and faintly, he could see one yellow iris staring back up at him. 

“Hello,” Rasticore said softly, watching the eye blink at him, feeling his heart begin to strangle. “Hey, Toff.” 

R-A-S-T.

“You’re going to be okay,” he said, voice choking up, though as to the accuracy of what he’d said, he had no fucking idea. “You’re gonna be okay, sir.” The next few pings came slowly, so much so that he almost had trouble parsing them together. 

I L-O-V-E Y-O-U.

His teeth gritted and bared, his vision beginning to blur with liquid.

“I, fuck, I love you too. I’m so glad I found you. We can fix this. I can fix this. You’re gonna be just fine.”

The eye looked slowly to the left, then the right. Shaking his head? 

T-H-A-N-K Y-O-U.

A tear ran the length of his face and dropped onto the shoulder of the flask. “You’re welcome, of course. Hell.” 

R-A-S-T.

“Don’t worry about me! I’m fine. You know, I was remembering you earlier, yeah, the first time we met… I mean properly met… I mean, when I kissed you for the first time…” He blushed and laughed, the tears beginning to swarm to the surface more quickly now. 

The eye narrowed at him, seeming to film over as well, as much as it could in its current state.

T-E-L-L M-E.

He did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God, Heinous is kinda awkward to write for me-- and I feel so bad making Rast squicked out like that, but that is the dynamic tbh. Poor bastard. He's a grown ass man. 
> 
> Some romance and angst for you all. 
> 
> I did promise he'd put Toff in a sink, but I feel like that'll come later now, when he starts to develop a skeleton and other hard bits that prevent flask!Toffee. For now I think Rast just wants to be able to hold him and keep him close, and having him there makes that a lot easier. Besides, this means that sink!Toffee is progressively regenerating Toffee, which is super great for both of them. Well, it's 100% great for Toff but for Rast it might be a little, er, gross and painful. Heh.


	6. Sinking Feelings

The days began to pass with an unusual elasticity, each week stretching and congealing in unexpected places. His employer’s brief stint of exile had made her work ethic, once reunited with her beloved institution, increase tenfold. Some had thought the rebellions at St.O’s would last forever, undaunted, but with new rules in place and a heavier meter of punishments, they had begun to die down— the girls who continued a strict revolt tended to disappear. They wouldn’t vanish forever, of course, having been sent by their families and generally viewed as indispensable; but when they returned, they were different. Polite, delicate, and twitchy, startled by sudden noises or objects moving in their periphery. It had been a lovely break, a breath of fresh air, when St.O’s had been under the princess’s governance, but like most exhales, the mewnian government wouldn’t let it bloom into something uncontainable. Once it became clear that the princesses were beginning to infect their company outside the school, various tired and unimaginative parents had rallied to get it going again. One’d have to imagine the queen signing off on it, if such things went that high. The only real difference between the treatment of the princesses and that of monsters were that the princesses were not made to share the same weight of their own inferiority. That, and they were well fed. 

The job took Rasticore everywhere, oftentimes to dimensions he had never fathomed, much less heard of. He moved through each operation as if he were walking through water, an added gravity and an added force behind each step. With Toffee around again, his work had become more difficult: often, during the inevitable pursuit of an assignment, he would be chasing her down, or have her cornered, and the old war thoughts would creep back in slowly from the edges of his mind, adjusting his stance, tuning his muscles, preparing him for a different opponent and eventual outcome. Even if the girl wasn’t mewman the thoughts still came— there were defectors, insubordination, and rarely, mutinies. He was accustomed to fighting other monsters. Several times he came right up to the verge of forgetting that he was under explicit instruction to return the girls alive— for this he had mixed feelings. Some of them may have preferred to die. 

It didn't help the job to be chasing after a frightened mewman child and have a sudden, visceral flashback of his teeth rending mewman flesh, blood spilling across his mouth and down his throat, pouring down his neck and chest in a victorious fountain. It didn’t help to remember that he had chased enemy soldiers down as they retreated, felling their mounts and catching his claws on their armor or around a limb as they struggled desperately to break away. Mewmans were inedible but their rides were passible, if the situation demanded it. When rations were low, scouts would retrieve the warnicorn corpses from the field; his head spun a phantasmagoria of pounding hooves and flesh thudding to dirt. Seeing the target as it was in the current reality sometimes brought him back to his senses. Sometimes. Injuries were reported. Rasticore remembered, with a very dreamlike quality to the memory, standing in Heinous’s office and being scolded about these incidents. She had offered him tea, though she’d come off a bit snappish— he couldn’t blame her relative to his own actions— and so he’d stood there, neither tensed nor relaxed, holding a cup of cooling tea in one hand and a thin white saucer in the other, listening to her reprimands. He’d retained none of it, his mind twenty something years away. 

It flashed between locations and circumstances, but most of the reminiscing traced back to Toffee in some way or another. The power of his movements and his command of a space, the distinction of his speech… How he looked bathed in moonlight, straddling Rasticore’s hips, his insides hot and all-consuming… For someone who had neither had nor particularly thought of sex beyond the abstract in two decades, it was surprising how quickly and how completely the thoughts and the associated need returned. Nights found him lying on his back, one hand and his tail working between his legs while the other hand held the flask against his teeth, his heart. The lack of intimacy, once the farthest thing from his mind, was beginning to feel like a constant ache.

Lately, the flask and its contents had grown louder, clinking more, and when he’d asked Toffee about it he’d gotten the simple response, “regenerating.” It seemed there would be a time limit on how long he could remain in the vessel; Rasticore held mixed feelings about this. On one hand, it was miraculous, better than he could have hoped, that Toffee was beginning to regenerate. On the other, taking him out of the flask meant that he would no longer be under Rasticore’s constant supervision and protection. There was also the question of where to put him— Somewhere he could expand outward to his proper size, but somewhere that could hold a viscous fluid well. After much deliberating and searching for properly sized bottles, Rasticore settled on his bathroom sink. Not the most glamorous place for a former general, but it would have to do. He spent several weeks on the fence about it, deliberating, hugging the flask against his chest and turning it over in his hands. Sometimes the black would retreat, and he could see flashes of teeth or bits of bone. No choice but to move him, really. He held the open neck to the lip of the sink and watched something slowly push its way out, not without some unpleasant cracking noises. Slowly, it began to reform itself, though as usual it seemed to struggle. An upper jaw and partial skull, complete with the one eye, rested atop the rest of the black. Unable to speak, the eye blinked at him. 

“How am I supposed to talk to you now,” Rasticore had lamented to himself, staring down at it. 

Slowly, the upper jaw had raised marginally, the hints of a lower jaw and tongue forming beneath it, though they were both made of the black fluid and had not properly regenerated at all. A horrible, guttural bubbling sound came from the mouth Toffee had tried to complete, startling Rasticore half out of his skin. 

“What the fuck was that?!” He looked around frantically, half-sure it’d come through the walls.

Bubbles and ripples appeared on the black surface, false body parts quickly dissolving.

T-R-I-E-D T-O S-P-E-A-K S-O-R-R-Y.

“Oh! No, it’s alright! We can just talk like this for now.”

T-A-K-E-S T-O-O L-O-N-G.

“No, it doesn’t.” He smiled. “It’s worth it to me.”

He’d stayed by the sink until unconsciousness threatened him, and even then, he was tempted to curl up around the sink’s trunk and sleep there. It wasn’t feasible, though, and he returned to his bed feeling their separation like a wound. Trying to masturbate proved itself useless— it wasn’t the same without Toffee there. Some part of him did wonder why he was being, and when he had become, so…dependent, almost, on the other man; it’d been very little like that in the military, he’d certainly liked Toffee, loved him, loved spending time with him, but he could still part ways and be just fine. He supposed part of that was that then he knew, or assumed, that he would always have access to Toffee again. But even in the weeks leading up to his capture, that hadn’t been true.

It’d been his own fault, he’d been stupid and reckless joining that scouting party, he’d been insubordinate doing it, and he’d behaved like an idiot the whole time he was on mission. Though he’d tried to justify what he’d done to himself in the beginning, reality had quickly caved the whole thing in. Everything had been going fine, short of that damn peace treaty. Then Toffee had gone rogue and things had spiraled almost impossibly out of control; that princess, Moon, had come, and did some kind of revenge magic on Toffee, and he had fled. The fights between them, which had begun when the general went rogue, raised in severity then. A confused and out-of-depth solider tried to parse the increasingly drastic measures of a general fighting a losing war. 

Toffee rarely spoke of what he’d seen or lost, but from the glimpses Rasticore had gotten, if they were to be believed, Toffee was centuries older than him, and had been alive and living in Septarsis, a thought nearly incomprehensible to Rasticore. Septarsis, as he understood it, had fallen to Mewni no less than five hundred years ago. He had been born to what he would have to assume were survivors of the attack in a monster’s ghetto, and had grown up around the miscellaneous other species and basic oppression Mewni kept them in. Hell, he’d only seen a handful of other septarians, excluding his family, in his whole life. 

Sitting on the floor beside the sink and a silent Toffee, eyes closed and leaned back, he thought back to those first sparks of tension between them.

\--

The news hit the camp like a swarm of bees, leaving its revelation in the form of furious welts, and flammable gossip. The details weren’t all in; all that they knew for sure was this: Toffee had done something horrible. No one knew what, exactly, only that he’d stepped out of line and the outcome had been bad. There were rumors from the front of the camp that his actions would prolong the war, but Rasticore didn’t particularly believe them. If he knew anything about his superior, it was that he fought largely for equality and peace for monsters, be that what it may. He’d also heard talk of negotiation meetings with their highest ranked and the current Butterfly queen… There were also rumors that these two things had to do with each other; this idea he dismissed completely. 

It was nearly midnight when Toffee returned to camp, walking a cold line down its center to his tent. Whispering followed him like racing waves, lapping in his wake, growing to crescendo. As he moved, Rasticore could see each little comment or exchange almost bounce into him, watched him grow more and more tense, until he stopped moving and turned to address them all, his voice chilling and his eyes vicious. 

“The Butterfly queen is dead.” Pin-drop silence fell upon the camp, broken only by the waver of flames. Distantly, someone could be heard dropping something. It lasted, building, and then popped open like a screaming blister moments later.

“Warmonger scum!” 

“Deserter! Traitor! Bastard!” 

“How could you do this to us?!”

Cries of disagreement and praise for the killing soon rose up to battle the dissenters. Toffee stood amidst the chaos, seeming darkened by it, then turned and disappeared behind the skull entrance of his tent. Still trying to comprehend what’d just happened, Rasticore followed close to his heels.

He found Toffee sitting on the side of his bed, forehead resting against his laced hands. Something felt different, off, and he suddenly felt uncomfortable coming any further into the tent than he had. 

“Fools,” Toffee spat at the floor. “All of them.” 

“Sir?” Rasticore tried quietly. Toffee looked up at him, his mouth still curled back in a snarl, fingers tightening against each other.

“Oh, it’s just you.” He relaxed, albiet marginally. “Come in, then.”

Rasticore stayed where he was.

“Is it really true? Did you kill her?”

Toffee laughed, a sharp, angry sound. “What’s it to you? Do you think I had any choice?”

“Of— Of course you did. She only came down to sign a damn treaty, Toff.” Rasticore ran a hand over his frills, feeling badly out of his depth. The look Toffee had just given him did nothing to alleviate the feeling.

“Excuse me, soldier? A damn treaty?” His eyes were slitted. “I did what I had to do for my fellows, nothing more.” 

“But jeopardizing a peace treaty does nothing for us! You had to have known that, it’ll only make things worse!” 

“You misunderstood me. My kind are not monsters, they are septarians. I did what I had to do to pay respect to my country.” His tone had grown softer, but lost none of its malice. 

“Septarsis doesn’t even exist anymore, Toffee, Gods, what’re the rest of us supposed to do, just keep fighting? Until what, until we’re all dead?” Somewhere in the back of his head, Rasticore heard a part of himself begging him to shut up. “No amount of killing will bring Seprarsis back!” 

“I do not mean to bring it back,” Toffee spoke, and for the first time, Rasticore felt genuine wrath directed towards him. “I mean to avenge its destruction. No pathetic fucking mewnian peace treaty will soothe what they have taken from me.” 

“What about us, the rest of us monsters?”

It was the first time he had ever seen Toffee smile and feel anything but happiness at the result. This smile was cold, bitter, cruel.

“What about them?” 

Rasticore felt a shiver run the length of him. A thousand accusations hovered on the tip of his tongue, and he pushed them down hard. He swallowed. 

“Them? Not me too?” 

“Of course not you. You’re septarian, Rast. I would never act opposed to your best interest.” His tone had softened, grown gentle, but the words still struck like a sword’s blow. “You understand why I had to do it, don’t you?” 

He’d looked up again. He looked… Hopeful. 

“I have to go, sir,” Rasticore stumbled out, and all but fled in a clinking of skulls, leaving Toffee to stare after him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Jesus, Toff, that's kinda cold. Never said it was a perfect relationship, did I? Because I don't write those. 
> 
> Sorry for midnight update but I'm on vacation, and I'm completely busy all day tomorrow and wanted to get something up. For those of you who are still awake, sorry babes! 
> 
> I like these flashback chapters.


	7. Something Off

As he left, a wall of noise rose up to meet him, questions and catcalls flooding in from every angle. 

“Did he really do it?”

“What happened, man?” 

“You okay? You look awful!” 

He did his best to ignore them and kept walking, the crowd ringing him so thickly that he had to all but push them aside at times, making a beeline for his own tent, his stomach in knots. “What about them.” It had been said with such a callous offhandedness, like their lives and their struggles were nothing compared to the weight of his superior’s own grievances. They were his army, his unit, malleable and disposable. How much of Toffee’s freedom fighter rhetoric had been nothing but lies? Did he want any sort of cooperation, or would he be unsatisfied until Mewni was cut down? It would never happen, and its impossibility in the face of the general’s fervor frightened Rasticore. Mewni had been there too long, it already had multiple kingdoms and steadily encroaching allies checking over its shoulder. He’d almost made it home free when one of them grabbed his arm, someone he barely recognized.

“Hey, what happened?” her tone held enough concern for him to yield. 

“The queen is dead,” he replied, his voice tinged with something almost like regret, finality. 

Shaking her grip off, he retreated behind the flaps of his tent, which did nothing for the sudden uproar in noise as the confirmation spread from its source. 

Rasticore had always known Toffee had that capacity in him— he’d sort of had to have it, given his position. He’d known he had a vicious streak and a bitterness, and that he thought less of his troops than other generals might. But he’d at least thought he cared about them, somewhere in his being he had to have cared. He took such good care of them; they never went hungry if it could be helped, their training under him was impeccable, and he showed no outward signs of disrespect. But he was septarian, and to him it seemed that was more than a basic identifier of appearance and behavior. Rasticore’s parents had never spoken of Septarsis to him, and he’d been raised in the pell-mell of other monsters; it’d never occurred to him not to group himself in with their lot, and to be honest, it still hadn’t, really. All his life he’d been a monster, and had carried the weight of the label’s oppression and the indoctrinated inferiority that came with it, as well as its touch of anti-mewman pride. A thin skin of alienation was forming between himself and Toffee thinking about how the other did not, and apparently never had, used that particular qualifier. It was almost laughable to him that Toffee didn’t consider himself a monster— he was. They all were. 

Part of him badly wanted to go back and try to talk to him again, talk some sense into him, get some understanding on where the hell he was coming from. The rest of him was still reeling, and frankly, tired. The day had been long enough, filled with rumors he now wished were true. He lay down on his cot, back to the entrance, and tried to convince himself to sleep; being in his own tent felt peculiar now, after nights on end spent with his commanding officer, and he could feel each imperfection in the straw stuffed mattress, as well as the distinct lack of a body by his side. An irrational need to go and check on Toffee, comfort him even, sprung into the back of his mind. He was probably going through a lot, what with the verbal lashing he must have gotten from the higher ups, and then his own troops’ exhaustive Q and A, and the fight between the two of them. His frills flared up in indignation at the thoughts— what was he doing, considering the roughness of Toffee’s day, when he was an exclusionist who’d brought it all down on himself? 

To think, the war could have been over that afternoon. He could have been on his way out; he didn’t want to think particularly about the fact that without the war he had no idea what to do with himself or where to go. In all reality, he probably would have just followed Toffee… But Toffee was hell-bent on a bottomless revenge, if his gist was to be gotten, and Rasticore shivered again at the thought of trying to build a life with someone that consumed, trying to balance him out and keep him in the present, keep him from throwing himself onto mewnian swords until the ground was scorched with his blood. He didn’t like, in that moment, that he knew there was a considerable amount of him that would be content with that life, wanted nothing more. He should be able to stand up for himself and his own feelings, general or no general. What he felt was that Toffee was wrong, and had done the wrong thing, and had fucked them all over. But maybe, he had left too quickly. Two options lay before him: he could either toss fretfully on the bed for the next five hours, thoughts swallowing each other and throwing up little splices of their previous conversation, or he could go back and try again. Though it would be painful, to be sure, he owed it to them, whatever they’d become, to try again. 

It would do no good waiting until the camp died down, for better or worse they were all awake now— only the truly languorous had retreated behind swaths of fabric. Still, he tried to wait until, at the very least, the space around his tent sounded quieter before slipping out. He made it about halfway before any significant interruption, passing small groups arguing and debating the events of the day, some working themselves to tears, others cheering on the death of the Butterfly queen. He walked by a group he had spent time with before, currently full throttle in discussion, when one of them called out to him.

“Hey, Rasticore, can you settle something for us?” An appendage that functioned similarly to a hand waved at him. 

“Yeah, so, I’m saying,” One of them started when all he’d done was turn his head to look at them, “When the general said the queen was dead, that doesn’t mean he actually killed her himself, right?” “Oh, sod off, it absolutely does!” 

“Nah, no way, I mean, she could’ve just—”

“She could’ve what? Dropped dead for no reason? Rasticore, man, get over here and help me talk some sense into this idiot.” 

Rasticore stared at them; they seemed tiny and far away. He gave his head a shake, blinking hard, and took a few steps towards them. 

“But like, listen, just because he said—”

“Toffee killed her,” he said bluntly, offering no outward emotions. “That’s what happened, end of discussion.” 

“What the hell, why?”

“I saw you go in there with him earlier right, he told you why, right? Did you ask?” 

“Of course he asked! Spill it, why’d the general go loco?”

Rasticore looked around for an answer, feeling the difference between himself and his company rise. What the hell was he supposed to say in answer to that? Toffee had told him something, certainly, but it wasn’t something that could be passed on to other troops without giving way to the potential for a mutiny; and he had little doubt in his mind how that would go. A general turning on his own like that would spark chaos, and the whole of their army, shaken by it, may well fall apart. Wouldn’t the mewmans love that for their history books? 

“He… Believed it to be in our best interest,” Rasticore chose his words carefully. “He thinks we can do better than a half-assed peace treaty.” 

“But… Uh… We’re losing.” 

“I…” I know, he wanted to say, we all know that. “I have to go, urgent business.” 

“Being summoned again? More evaluations?” A snicker passed through the group and Rasticore felt down to the vein the color drain out of his face. Why had they laughed, what did they know? How much did they know? He hardened his posture. Fuck them if they knew— he was in no mood to deal with accusations or perceived advice. 

“Something like that.”

As he was walking away, he caught traces of their banter.

“Always knew something was off about him, but I never thought it’d go this far.”

“Yeah, buggery I can see, what with the getup and all, but insubordination? He never struck me as the type.”

“Wait, do you mean to tell me that’s what they’re doing?! Gross, man.” 

“I don’t get it, we’ve got buckets of female soldiers.” 

“Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you. Shit, hope he doesn’t try to evaluate me!”

Rasticore sped up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm SO SORRY it's so tiny, I'm working on 8 right now but where it ended felt like a natural pause and I couldn't take it further without a big section break and I didn't want to do that shit. I really don't care if I'm up till 5am today/tomorrow I wanna get 8 done cause I'm planning on it being a smut chapter! 
> 
> You might have to wait until the weekend though bc for whatever reason I tried to write and holy moly it was garbage, babes :(


	8. Monsters

They stood on opposite ends of what felt like a circle, tracing the lips of the circumference with waving tails and careful steps. After being allowed in, if somewhat begrudgingly, the soldier found himself at a loss as to where to place himself in the tent; their usual routine had been thrown off, scrambled. Across from him, having been interrupted mid-exercise, his breathing still metered, and barely dressed, his superior met his own stare in both weight and agitation; his own tail lashing perhaps a bit more sharply than Rasticore’s. Aside from this, his blinking and breathing, and the occasional pink slip of tongue poking out in thought, he was completely still. Rasticore for his part felt as if his limbs were cast in wax, forced to hold a form and a line, his frill twitching outward at any perceived movements from Toffee. 

“Listen—” he began, a hand reached out, a half-bridge. 

“Listen to what, soldier?” snapping teeth rose to meet his offering. 

His frill jumped, a spike of movement. Toffee’s tail hit against the leg of a table in response, jarring the contents with the force of the action. 

“Listen, I came here to try and understand you, but if you won’t even hear me out, we’ve got nothing more to say to each other.”

“Hear you out?” Toffee gave him a distinctly unpleasant smile. “More grief about the queen?”

“Sir… Could you… Just…” Rasticore held his fingers to his brow, looking for some semblance of proper wording, his frustration coming through loud and clear.

“Could I? For whose benefit? I’m not apologizing.”

“Sir, could you just cut the bullshit for one second and listen to me?!” he barked, his stance widening and lowering, teetering towards the offensive. 

Toffee’s eyes narrowed dangerously, his own posture changing to counter Rasticore’s. 

“You will not speak to me that way,” he bit out, fingers twitching into curled talons, tail snapping with an audible crack in the bone. “Learn your place.”

“Oh, I see.” Rasticore’s teeth bared, hands balling into fists at his side. “So you’ll only treat me like an equal if I behave the way you want me to?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“If I’m good, I’m a septarian; if I’m disobedient I’m no different from any other monster!” He lunged forward, one arm pulling back at the elbow, mere feet from Toffee now. The general’s face held fury, but more than that it showed disdain, and some distant cousin of pity. With a frustrated yell, Rasticore punched toward him, growling when Toffee slid out of the way. 

“Of course you’re different. Your origins do not change depending on my mood… Ridiculous sentiment.” Now he just sounded bored.

“But whether or not I’m just some disposable soldier to you— Whether or not you care about me— That all depends, doesn’t it?!”

Toffee raised his eyebrows slightly. “Depends… You really think that little of me?”

“I— I didn’t used to— I still don’t— I…” His fists trembled, one raised to strike again. 

“That kind of mistrust, flightiness, that’s what makes you like a monster. Not your race, nor anything else about you.” 

“So you do think—”

“What do I think, Rast?” he drawled, one claw flicking beneath another. 

“DON’T PLAY YOUR MIND GAMES WITH ME!” the other roared, deaf to the sounds of startled figures outside. 

Before he could strike again Toffee was all but on top of him, one hand clamping over his mouth, their faces inches apart. 

“Be quiet, you—”

Before either could move the wall of skulls split open, revealing several concerned faces and readied swords. 

“Is everything alright, we heard—Oh. Uh. Should we, uh, come back later, sir?” one said, a grimace creeping across his face while the cohort behind him seemed to ripple, suppressed laughter, whispering. From his vantage point, Rasticore could easily see each man’s death detailed explicitly in Toffee’s eyes. 

“Get. Out.”

“Er, yeah, we’ll just… Yeah. Yeesh, good luck, Rasticore.”

“GO!”

In a clatter of bone they were gone. The two stood, left alone once more— Rasticore pressed against the thick cloth of one wall, Toffee against his chest, breathing harder than before, his body still taut and his head tilted up to compete with the other man’s height advantage. Standing there, like that, it was difficult not to remember the many other times he had been backed into a wall by Toffee, though usually those times, their mouths were locked together and his jeans were falling off; he had memorized the feeling of that body against his, the sound of his tail sweeping along the ground and his uneven gait as he moved them together, claws dragging weeping lines into Rasticore’s back, one hand then wrapped around his neck and teasing his frills, the other a softened curl around his shaft, begging hardness from him, the pulls long and hungry. His soft breathing, glistening eyes, the way he’d look up with his mouth slightly open, tongue wrapping around an incisor, the flare of heat where his cock was pressed against the soldier’s hip…

Rasticore looked down at him, considering him. Toffee’s eyes were still trained on the entrance to his tent, his brow furrowed in obvious irritation, hands uncurled to rest atop his hips. In all likelihood he was still fuming. Rasticore leaned in and bumped their noses together, startling Toffee rather obviously, at least judging by the look he received in return.

“You— What was that for?”

“I didn’t come here to fight more, I came back to talk to you. So talk to me.”

Toffee eyed him suspiciously. “You’re still upset, though.”

Rasticore considered it. “Yes, I am, but not in the same way. Though I think you ought to apologize.”

“I do not and will never regret my—”

“No, no, not that. For being a dick.” He looked down at the other, giving him an incredulous smile. “‘Learn your place?’’” 

His superior pressed closer, head falling next to his shoulder, one leg beginning to slide between his own. His breathing had deepened slightly, hot air fanning across the skin of his lowering frills, the sensation dripping like honey through his veins. 

“Well, you ought to.” The tenor of his voice was no longer hostile; it’d taken on a quality Rasticore knew all too well. 

“And what is my place, general?” One hand came to rest atop Toffee’s tail; he couldn’t hold back a slight smile feeling it swish against the earth in anticipation. One of Toffee’s hands had found his chest, tracing the muscle, thumb running across a nipple; he leaned forward to touch their skin together, his body smooth and warm. 

“That depends.” A nip at his frills, then another; the feeling of a tongue lapping at the resulting blood. 

“Ahh… On what?”

“On however I wish to be serviced,” Toffee purred, snapping his teeth through the delicate membrane, his hips pushing forward and beginning to rub against the other man. 

Rasticore felt his frills begin to rise, the skin ripping and shearing around the places it disappeared into his commanding officer’s mouth. As Toffee pushed closer, rising up to accommodate their difference in build, his neck fell against the front of the soldier’s shoulder; he felt a hot teardrop of his own blood tracing down the bared throat, and the delicate resistance and eventual give of some of his smaller spines poking into Toffee’s skin. One hit a vein and elicited a soft gush of blood and resulting gasp from the general; Rasticore wound an arm around him, claws dragging red lines into his spine as Toffee all but worked the spike deeper. 

“How might that be tonight, sir?” Rasticore said, tone equal parts frustrated and endearing, gazing down at the crown of Toffee’s head to his right, down the supine flow of his back and to his own hand kneading the dimples above his tail. “Though I have to say, I’d still like a conversation with you about before.” 

Toffee eased himself off of the shoulder spine, sighing somewhat breathily as the point slid out of his flesh. As the wound closed up in a graceful zip he leaned back, his eyes scrolling along Rasticore’s figure, stopping at several key points before resuming direct contact.

“On your knees, private,” Toffee said smoothly, giving him a dangerous smile. “Like the monster you so claim to be.”

He stepped back enough for Rasticore to start lowering himself down; he made it about halfway before Toffee grabbed onto his shoulders and forced him onto his knees— the force of the impact jarred up through him, causing him to let out a growl of surprise. He glared up at the other, rubbing out a kink in his neck and feeling somewhat annoyed by what’d just happened. Sure, he knew Toffee liked power play, but wasn’t he getting just a little bit ahead of himself for all the trouble he’d caused? 

“The hell was that for, Toff?” 

“You want me to treat you like another monster? Another soldier? A ready mouth?” His tone was beginning to tip, becoming unfamiliar to Rasticore. “If you insist, I will— Don’t complain to me about it.” 

“And if I should say stop, sir?” Rasticore tried. He didn’t much care for the tone of his superior’s voice.

“If you ask me to stop, then naturally, I will,” Toffee countered, appearing a bit confused as to why the question was being posed at all. “And you will be free to go… But you’re not asking me to stop, now, are you?” 

Rasticore considered this, and found that, on some deeper level, he wasn’t at all inclined to stop. It had barely occurred to him, in fact. 

“No, sir, I’m not.” 

The bloodletting smile returned in earnest, and Rasticore sighed, looking up at Toffee with a bit of an about face. He was still enjoying himself too much.

“Well. In that case, mouth, get to work.” 

The soldier bit back rolling his eyes at that. Of course he knew Toffee to be more than capable of a certain amount of swagger and bravado, but still, wasn’t he flaunting his power a bit too much for someone who, as far as Rasticore knew, had gambled it all and had nearly been stripped of his whole damn title? 

Leaning in, he spoke against the crease of Toffee’s thigh. “I have a condition, by the way.” 

“Oh? A condition? What might that be, little monster?” 

“Think of her.”

Toffee’s smile faltered considerably, and he gave a sharp look down, his face speaking confusion and definite concern.

“Her who?” 

“The woman you killed. The Butterfly queen. Think about her. Think about her family and her future and her past. Think about who she was and who she could have been, all that she hoped to accomplish, think about the peace she could have wrought; think about everything you took that wasn’t yours to touch.” 

Toffee’s eyes went wide, one hand sweeping over the back of Rasticore’s head. A faint smile teased at the corners of his mouth.

“That’s your condition, is it? Think of her?” 

“Yes, think about her. Think about what you did,” Rasticore muttered, nipping at the fastenings of Toffee’s trousers, exhaling deep as the general’s hand cupped the back of his head, pushing him forward. After a bit of finagling, he got the main knot to fall open with his tongue, then turned his attention to the rest of the lacing, eyes flicking up to observe his superior. Toffee was staring rapt down at him, his smile widening, pupils thick. 

“Shut your eyes and think about it, or I’m stopping.”For once, Toffee did as he was told, his eyes sliding shut and his head tilting back, though the hand to the back of Rasticore’s head tightened its grip, beginning to scratch into him. He hummed softly as Rasticore worked him free of his clothing, parting the fabric just enough for his cock to stand free. 

“Mm—Ahh, oh Rast, that’s…” 

Rasticore bumped his snout softly against it before taking the head between his teeth, each needle point applying just enough pressure to leave raised scratches in the delicate skin as he slid down the length of it to the base, tongue working with increasing creativity. He smiled a little as he felt Toffee’s hips roll forward harshly, accompanied by a sharp pain to the back of his skull. Briefly curious, he looked up to his superior again, just to check. Toffee’s head was still thrown back, eyes tightly shut, a feral smile curling his mouth as he began to build a rhythm against Rasticore, driving himself to hit towards the back of his mouth, teeth parting to loose his first moan at the contact. Good, he appeared to be, at the very least, pretending to honor Rasticore’s request. He returned his gaze to his work, his tongue wrapping around the shaft and working to push beneath the head, accompanied by varying pressure with his teeth; he seemed to be rewarded with shakier thrusts when he dug them in and pulled the skin towards himself. 

“Ahhh! Fuck, Rast, I—Think I—”

Fingers met his left frill and began to tease the membrane, damn him, damn him straight to hell if he thought that was going to work, just because he was apparently easy tonight— Still Rasticore felt his eyelids flutter and his concentration shift from Toffee’s cock to his own body and its current stimulation. Bobbing his head, partially to shake off the chills racing through him, he looked up just in time to see his superior’s teeth clench, heard him swear, and felt the familiar spill of come hit the back of his throat. Pulling off, he swallowed quietly and looked up to check on Toffee, whose overall position remained unchanged, though his hand swept in to replace Rasticore’s mouth; he seemed unusually distracted. 

“Hey, you okay, Toff?”

“Ahh, Gods, fuck, so fucking…” Finally his eyes slitted open and he looked down at Rasticore. “Never ask me to do that again, bastard.” 

“Do what again?” 

He grinned breathlessly, hand relaxing against himself. “Think about killing a Butterfly.”

Rasticore gave him an incredulous look. “Uh, and fucking over the entire monster army.” 

“Yes, yes, that happened too… Gods, I should have known it’d be too much to feel those things together.” 

“What things?” 

Though he’d asked, he wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to hear a straight answer.

Toffee bent down, coming to kneel across from Rasticore. His eyes betrayed no remorse as he spoke.

“Pleasure and victory.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Toffee what the fuck. Like, What the Whole Fuck. You should get some help man. 
> 
> I love writing him though he's got so much going on and it's really clear how much war and decimation took this fairly ordinary person and just WRECKED HIS SHIT. Rasticore is just so much fundamentally nicer like jesus. 
> 
> It's smut, but it's weird smut. Rast has a lot to think about now, and a lot to think about having remembered this exchange. Don't get me wrong, they do genuinely love each other, but there's a serious darkness in Toffee that he sometimes wishes he could ignore, or at least wishes it wasn't so prominent at times-- because they've been through completely different shit, there're some things Toffee does that he just can't understand. 
> 
> This dialogue was super fun. I hope I gave you a weird angsty boner.


	9. Teeth

They grew in slowly, and with the effort of a thousand men he swirled what he must now recognize as his body around in the porcelain basin, listening to them clink like moths’ kisses against the tub, white on white. The one eye he held onto— the other turned to pulpy liquid and he can still feel its phantom dangling sticky against his cheek— could not see out of the sink; he could hear his savior moving around on the floor below, silent but for the occasional hum, lord knew what he was really thinking. He tried to slosh the five or so teeth he’d amassed to click hard against the basin, do something to get Rasticore to pay him notice. Nothing came of it, and he expected nothing less.

All of this had been an exquisite surprise (fitting, he thought with a sigh, what constitutes a sigh, of his own particular exquisite corpse), being discovered by friendly arms, being pulled from his unwilling resting place, and while he needed the sink to expand and reform, some part of him still craves the dark of the flask, its safety, god, he had gotten so used to the dark. Despite what it might’ve seemed, the magical plane was nothing but darkness— often he elected not to have use of his eyes, for looking up at the diseased sky put him ill at ease. He wanted to talk about it, tell Rast about it, the absolute and nearly unspeakable horrors that merging with Mewni’s magical plane had caused him, yet. It seemed unexplainable, untouchable, the only living beings he felt could understand such things were his two most despised; they joined the ranks of Moon and the queen who had felled his kingdom. It could still pick him to bits that he did not know her name; that he had never tasted her blood.

Pay attention to me. The words lingered in where he supposed a mouth could go; his teeth were loose ships in the float of black magic body, wandering from the fragments of his skull and upper jaw, and god, he felt nauseous begging it, even if silently. He could tell it hurt Rasticore to so much as look at him; he wanted to tell himself it was because of his current state, his amorphous horrible body, the rivers and pools of godawful magic holding his consciousness and claiming him alive. But the suspected truth he could not touch— yet within whatever Toffee had left of a mind, he ran his fingers through it, a thousand strokes across an opening wound. That whatever was between them had burnt out and nothing more than dogged obligations had saved his life. There were things that spoke contrary to this, sure, yet it did nothing to soothe his digging into that particular pain.

Things had ended badly, so fucking badly, and he had held onto the night they had exploded outward, held onto himself lying alone in his bed, defiantly alone, sobbing into the palm of his hand. He’d expected it to scab over eventually— they had time. If there was one thing any septarian had it was time. But then Rasticore hadn’t come back. And he’d held onto, too, the exact circumstances under which he’d been told this and the hollow agony that settled in after he’d heard: Mewman soldiers had captured a raid party, and this was who was in it, and the name of his lover fell from subordinate lips and settled into his mind like a thick black needle. For driving them apart, in that instant, he hated the young queen Moon more than he had thought he had the capacity to hate another anymore. When news got to the higher ups that Mewni had a magic that could kill a septarian, that was the end of that. His unit, already frightened and disorderly, unable to meet his furious eyes, was quickly disbanded; the wretched treaty signed. The war became a whisper on drunken breaths, a candle blown out with a silver bell.

—

He’d curled his tail around the pillar of the sink; the floor felt almost like a womb, though the sound it made when his shoulders and right arm fell against the tiles was grating. Breaking reverie, he sighed and looked up at the bowl of the sink, hovering above him like the cup of heaven. He couldn’t see the other from this vantage point, and god, he hated the relief that washed over him for that. Could Toffee tell the sight of him could set the other man’s teeth on edge? It wasn't that it was him, and it wasn’t even that he was broken— but what was he? Did he… have nerves, a brain, traditional feelings? His current state seemed designed to induce existentialism, something Rasticore wasn’t particularly fond of at the best of times. If Toffee could survive as a consciousness without a brain, heart, or body, what part of him was holding on? Did this mean he had a soul? Did that then mean they all had souls? What did that mean about death, true death? An afterlife? They had, in their time together, never spoken about religion; neither his interrogators nor Heinous had mentioned any God, and when the princesses prayed they never named any specific deities or rites. 

Even these questions did nothing towards explaining what his body looked like, if “body” was an applicable word. What the hell was he, and what had been done to him to cause that? No magic he could think of resulted in such an outcome— Not even Moon’s spell, which aside from an errant black butterfly or two had severed with a clean precision, leaving a raw, perfect wound. Black, iridescent scarab-green fluid was outside the range of the ordinary, outside of his limited knowledge of magic; but magic it had to be, he could think of nothing else and no way for such a state to occur naturally. His mind flashed from the diamonds on the child queen’s cheeks to the clubs on his employer’s, and a coldness swept across him. Could she do that to him, or relinquish him to Moon for her judgement? For Toffee to be in this state, lord knew he’d had to’ve done something. Harboring a fugitive (a supposedly dead one at that)— who knew what would be done to him if he were found out. 

This brought up a fairly urgent problem: he was safe for the night, but come morning he would have to leave, resuming his work, and essentially abandoning Toffee for the day. He’d done his best with precautions, but was under no illusions as to how well they would be respected; Whether or not Heinous respected his request for privacy (he had his doubts), Gemini certainly would not. The creature had a certain shiftiness about him, a certain desire to please that made him insufferable, and unlikely to heed Rasticore’s instructions. He could be a grown man all he wanted, but to them, he was a fancy pet, and an imprisoned soldier, and lord did they let him know it. 

He had, first of all, no idea how to get Toffee out of the sink now that he had been deposited. He was clingy and viscous, and frankly, uncomfortably warm. He couldn’t go back into the flask, unfortunately— too much bone had grown back; from the faint sounds above him, it seemed Toffee had also begun to develop teeth. There was now the omnipresent fear that his general would be flushed or thrown away if he left the room for more than thirty minutes, and if he knew one thing, it was that Mewni’s sewers were a kind of hell he could wander forever and never recover the loss. 

The ideas were beginning to tilt hypothetical, rhetoric, and silly. Feigning illness indefinitely? Unlikely. Quitting? In his fucking dreams. Disguising Toffee as some kind of inter-dimensional slime princess? Come on. Straight up killing Gemini? Again, dream on. Then the ideas began to get more realistic, if more disgusting to him. Steal an old perfume bottle of hers, put Toffee in that, and say something wilting and self-damaging when confronted about it. He could do that. Lord, it would hurt, and he would have a lot of explaining to do to Toffee if he overheard the aftermath of that, but it didn’t involve any killing or visible goo lizard. It might damage his own psyche, perhaps without end, and it might put him in one hell of a situation, but it would keep Toffee safe. As long as nobody tested the weight of the bottle. Although if it were full he could make the same argument, though it would be no less horrible in the end. 

“I spray it on my pillow,” he tested mentally, and retched against the tiles. Oh lord. Toffee had better be goddamn alive for all the effort he was putting into this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I AM SO SORRY I WROTE THIS TONIGHT I AM SO SO SORRY IT'S LATE AAAAAAA THE CAFE IS CLOSING LEMME TRY AND GET IT OUT BEFORE IM BACK I LOVE YOU ALL THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE
> 
> IF RAST WERE REAL HE WOULD KILL ME MULTIPLE TIMES AND THAT'S FRANKLY TOTALLY FAIR.


	10. Misses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: NON-CON THEMES

She wore her skin as if it still curled tight to her flesh and only showed pucker in the wet and cold, and curved her hands out to his jaw as he could only imagine she thought she moved like water, supine and delightful, that there were no overt pops of her wrists or creaks in her bloodstream. Lord forsake him— she really thought she was beautiful, and most of all beautiful when he beheld her. He could see the blossoms of age on her body, padded with thick powder foundation, the thinness of her and the fragility, her scent clogged in his head, and she directed his good hand— he bit back the revulsion and the shaking and the bloodlust building in the roots of his teeth. 

“Well, of course you can have it, though I’ve better things for you to hold at night.” 

And she pressed licked paper lips to his muzzle, her hands at each side of his head, and his mouth, sealed tight, flooded with bile. He wished she would reach for the hand without nerve endings. Her fingers and their almond flake nails slid underneath his frill and attempted to please the his skin, god, don’t cry, don’t kill her. He had taught her to mistake his fury for caution, that he could not hold her, or love her, lest he break her like the insect she was. With her he felt himself re-taught the meaning of being a monster; an arbitrary and meaningless mewman word that allowed her a status above him; allowed her his dehumanization. His exhales shook, looking over the clouds of her greying hair he tried to keep focus on vessels that would allow him to protect who he actually loved, while her hands kept at his neck and wrist, her lips textured like flies’ wings, insistent. 

Her hips began to lean, and he felt the familiar burn below his left shoulder, each memory leading up to the moment of amputation growing sharp and tangible. He could see what she wanted but could not fathom his own appeal to her; his hand tightened where it was held and a thin brown line of fluid escaped from the corner of his mouth as she gasped. Animal. They treated their oppressed like animals and commodities— repulsed by his kind and claiming the right to build her home in his arms. 

“Have you decided, shall we,” she panted, pressing a withered cheek to his collarbone. His thoughts clung desperately to death in all its forms, and to bodies splitting open like overripe fruit in his hands. 

“I can’t,” he bit out, hand ripping from her chest, he forced it to stop by one side but ached to draw it back and punch a ragged hole through her body, pulpy and gargling, and she would say through bloodied lips, I thought you loved me. 

“I can’t,” He repeated, and in it he meant many things— I can’t live like this, I can’t be your pet anymore, I can’t stand the fact of your touch, I can’t degrade myself to your service, I can’t control what I do much longer. 

“Maybe you only think we can’t—”

“No,” he said it hard, and took her wrists too forcefully and tried to stop his eyes from rolling as she squeaked in pain. 

The blessed idea was to rip a hole into her stomach and dig out her intestines with his good hand while the metal one sought out the joints of limbs to rend off. 

“Would you let go, darling, that hurts!” 

For the rape of his people, his being, and nearly his body, and yet he forced himself to breathe. He let her go. 

“You’ve been quiet today,” she remarked, turning from him to her vanity, her hands wrapping around a bottle big enough to crack the skull of a man. 

“Preoccupied,” he said below his usual tone, listening to the mechanical rattle of his voice and taking the offering from her with one metal hand. He looked down at it. Ribbed glass, golden label, pinkish liquid. 

Would Toffee be proud of him or hate him, for playing his part so well after his life had fallen in? Would he even fit in the bottle, or had he taken a needless dip into potential madness, lord knew it wouldn’t stave her off of him, she made him ache for the days of being in the Butterflies’ dungeon, the research, the bright lights and cold steel and sarcastic questions. The amputation point prickled. 

Would he like one of her dresses for the back of his closet, or the warmth of her bones to his bed? 

“No, this’ll be fine.” He forced his tone to purr and his body to stay rigid. 

He left her retreating to her private chambers, and barreled through her door, and past the snickering abominations; the princesses parted like waves, foamy jewel tones and sparkling pastels, their features swimming as his eye shone wet with held tears. The tear duct of the carved out eye twitched, unable to connect to a functioning eyeball, and the stinging did nothing for the misting or the overarching tunnel of pain. He made it forty feet, shattered a window with his fist, and emptied his stomach through the jagged hole, glass peaking his neck and dripping his blood onto mewnian architecture.  
He wanted to rip off the arm, tear out the eye, thrash out the mechanical lungs.

The walk back to his room was slow and pitiful, his stride bearing the weight of the afternoon. It wouldn’t work, would it, again he had made a plan too quickly and gambled his chances of success, and like then, as like now, he had let his superior down and had failed him spectacularly— and now he was going to sit alone in the dark, feeling hopelessly bound, farther from Toffee than he had ever been. 

Once locked into his little niche of pretend self-controlled space, his kennel and cell, he set the perfume bottle on the sill of a deep-set window, stared at it, and looked around for something to break. He considered putting out another posting on his usual haunts— experienced, discrete, will take anything— though what he needed wasn’t another side job, it was to get down onto his knees and kill something; something with a beating heart and a sentience to it. She had a particular quality to her that brought about needs in him he usually kept distance from: the longing and drive to make others suffer, bleed in time with his own wounds. Other particulars included the quiet horror of being an exotic war trophy, and the trait most mewmans passed to him of making him despise his own exposed flesh, the curves of his body ringing hollow with perceived glances and touches, equal parts sexualization and vilification. Dissociation was beginning to leach into his brain, pinning back all other thoughts, let alone anything rooted in present experiences, or anything he might need to do.

It occurred to him to fight it, go into the bathroom, and remember who he was and what was needed of him. It would mean touching the perfume bottle again, and gods, he wasn’t strong enough. Breathing slow and deep, he popped the right eye out, turning it over and over like a prayer stone in the one good hand, a rosary with one heavy bead. It found the table beside his bed; the arm unscrewed from its base buried in the weak and greyed out flesh of his shoulder, and found the floor in gentle resignation; he pushed it under the bed with one foot. The lungs and robotic hum he was forced to keep, or face suffocation, the cells holding him up would struggle to regenerate with the lack of oxygenated blood, and he would be left gasping forever, rotting slowly into pale dust. 

It wasn’t the most unwelcome idea. He settled then, though, for curling up as tightly as he could on the cheap mattress and pulling the thin blankets he had little need for over his body, cupping the point of amputation with his opposite hand, tail protectively between his legs, one socket light and fluttering and growing wet at its rim. He pushed hard, crushing the thoughts of the afternoon and his present reality into slips of powder, breathing them away, it was alright, it was alright. 

It was cheap, but he fled in bone and blood to the ghetto where he’d been born, to the few days his family enjoyed warmth and light in the wake of desperate poverty and mewman policing; before the raids had picked up, before the screams that rocked the walls and the trapdoor in the living room floor, before his decision to flee to the army. And god, it was morning, and he, adolescent, was curled in an even shittier bed with his arm and eye and goddamn organs intact, conjuring the sounds of his parents moving behind thin walls— he could hear them, feel the warmth of the sun through the warped, syrupy glass, his body was small and innocent, and when the tears came and threatened to snatch away the delusion, his good hand drew blood to the cap of his left shoulder in feeble rebellion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When I said their relationship was fucked up and manipulative and it really bothered me, I was. Not. Kidding. 
> 
> I feel so fucking bad for my boy. He's been through his own particular hell. I'm still going to explore it, but for now, he's going to sleep and have nice fucking dreams and maybe some tea and honey or something. 
> 
> I've got my own politics on this issue, and let me tell you: nothing good happens to those who take without mutual consent and want. Nothing good.

**Author's Note:**

> Oops, I did it again, I wrote more lizards, got lost in the gay. 
> 
> That reference is probably older than I am. I don't know. I'm bad with time. I'm also in denial about Toffee being dead, and I love eldritch nightmare creatures, beings made of elastic void, and body horror. So Goo Boi.jpg was right up my alley. 
> 
> I will try with all my might not to just abandon this story, especially because I'm very new to writing anything fluffy in any way, shape, or form.   
> I don't have a strict ending for this, so we'll see where it goes. Basically I saw Rast hiding Toff in a sink while he regenerated, and I needed some plot to back it up. This is that plot.


End file.
